As soon as I get past the fence post, I’m in. Tonight is a long game of hide-and-seek—according to the flyers. The townsfolk, young, old, sick—well, everyone who isn’t Moving On—are expected to contribute to the Warding Off. In the olden days, before the population boom of ’54, families had to Move On their own kin. Imagine Moving your own family On and Warding them Off in the same breath. It’s unnatural. It took Mother Opal to put an end to that.
On the breeze, I hear snatches of music. One of the marching band’s tuning up. They’ll be playing all night long. Each of the Moving On is assigned a small band. Never far behind the chase, led by a tireless conductor and creative drum majorette, each band will match the mood with joyful or suspenseful tunes composed especially for the Warding Off. Just last year, the pelting and screaming, hooting and hollering were accompanied by a catchy tune that became a top-ten hit by the next morning. The music sort of adds to the festivities. It lifts everyone’s spirits. The Moving On appreciate it as much as everyone else—dead or alive—would do. Even if it is loud enough to raise the dead.
When they can’t take it anymore, the ever-rising crescendos, stones, chants, hisses and screams will lead the Moving On to the Creek. The blows of mercy send the soul from the body. There’s worse things to come. Once the soul is freed from the body, the townsfolk really get to work. Along with everyone else, children, little clubs in one hand, some sort of candy in the other, will be up hunting ghosts all night for the Warding Off. If it weren’t against the rules, they’d be sure to keep one for themselves to dress up in see-through getups and twist into indecent poses while they take pictures that no camera could capture anyway.
Once the souls are set upon and dispersed, the prize ceremony can begin. The little ones get participation badges so even if they don’t hit a Moving On earlier, they have a souvenir of the night. Everybody needs something to hold on to. There are trophies, prizes and ribbons for the older folks. Fastest Mover-On-er, quietest chaser, terrorizer, hell-raiser. The Moving On is getting too commercial, Mother Opal used to say. Before long they’ll be selling postcards and key rings. Like she’d be caught dead without her Moving On satchel. Bless her soul.
There’s not a star in the sky. It’s just past six and dark as midnight. Just like the Warding Off should be. The street’s littered with shadows. It’s going to be a good night. I can feel it. If I’m lucky, I won’t see any spirits at all. Won’t even be a need to use my stick. I’ll use it anyway, of course. I’ll run just as hard as usual, swing just as wide. I’ll make a show of it. Osira the believer. Everybody will be talking about it: how I cornered some misguided returned soul. I might even win another trophy this year. There will be no limit to my commitment—no doubt either.
The wind’s rushing through the streets like it’s got the good sense to blow on through this place without coming back. I’m dressed warm enough but still shivering. Every now and then there’s a muffled note. The bands are warmed up. Soon, the bell will ring. Families will file out of their homes, take their places in line. They’ll march, left, right, left, right, left into town. There used to be pitchforks and torches but since the Council declared it uncivilized and voted to “move with the times,” there’s been an ordinance against it. I hear other places still carry them, though. Marching like extras in that old vampire film they used to rerun at the cinema.
All the streetlamps are out. Lights will be off all around town. Houses, shops, the church, the guesthouse, school, courthouse. Not one candle lit or one switch hit, the saying goes. I guess what happens in the dark, and all that. Rocks and dirt crunch beneath my feet. I’m echoing down the lane. I’m not the only one walking on it, though. Scouts from the other families will be out setting up viewing and hiding spots. Places to attack. Places to heal. They should have prepared before now but ain’t that always the way? Some folks are just hardheaded. Last-minute Sallys. They’d probably be late to their own Moving On—if the town would let them.
Whoever is following me isn’t very good at it. They breathe every three counts, hold their breath for ten, breathe out again. I walk in place. Hold my breath. There’s a gentle breeze as they rush past, trying to catch up. I slip off one shoe, cock my right arm, hook my hand slightly, and release. I imagine the shoe zigzagging in a crooked line.
“Ow!” The yell is soft, no need to draw attention. The voice and its owner seem to hit the ground at the same time. “No fair, you didn’t have to hit me.”
“No,” I say. I catch up to where they fell. I feel around the dirt road with my stockinged foot. It’s caked and cold. The rocks are sharp, jagged edges and angles. “But I wanted to.”
Jeremiah’s still rubbing his head when I help him up. We press our thumbs together gently. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“I know.” I do. Betraying me like this will show the town that, unlike his mother, Jeremiah is one of them.
My friends, widows and newlyweds, swarm out of the trees like wet bugs. There’s really only ten of us but they are a mass of chattering teeth and moans. It serves them right. They must have been waiting in the wet grass for a good hour for me to get here. They’re not at all dressed for this in their bright-colored pantsuits, wide-winged blouses, dangly jewelry, hope. I tap my foot, steady my breathing.
“You gonna run?” Mae is always impatient. She would rush her own funeral if they didn’t see fit to sew her mouth shut. I hope I get her first. She stands close to Jeremiah so I can see them together. It’s how I know she’s planning to marry him if something happens to the good doctor and Florence. He should be careful though. Wife or not, she’d turn against him even if she didn’t have to. She’s practically my sister and still I trust her as little as I would trust myself if the rock was in the other hand.
“Nope.” There’s not much point to running anyway. Jeremiah’s already told them where he thinks my hiding spot is. If they have even a drop of sense, one of them is waiting on me there. If I go to the real spot now, I won’t be able to use it in an emergency. May as well let them think they know all there is to know. I’m glad I heeded Mother Opal’s advice. Never tell the truth to someone you love. It makes it worse when they turn on you. Of course, her other piece of advice was not to love anyone.
“If you’d rung the bell, none of this would be happening,” Ezekiel says. He has a handful of pebbles and I think of Daddy’s stone, now tucked inside my pocket. He clacks them together like commas stringing his words together. Pharmacist by day. I used to like him. Not like him like him. But like him enough not to tease him for having a hand-me-down bell when we were kids.
I shrug. They need me to say it’s my fault, that I deserve what’s coming to me. None of them deserves anything but bad news over this.
“We’ll give you a head start. Since you’re practically family. Go on, take it.” Florence pushes me.
“No, thanks.” Anything they want to do to me, they can do in front of their own families. Especially their kids. Let them see what kind of monsters their parents are. Who am I kidding? They probably already know. Kids, parents, in-laws, lovers—most of them are probably peeking out of their windows, cradling their phones. Did you see that? No? Me neither. They should be minding their own business. Gathering clubs and sticks, tying hair back, oiling bare skin, getting their own houses in order.
“Even your father needed a head start,” Mae says.
Heaven help her. She’s expecting me to slap her and, as much I want to feel her skin beneath my nails, I kick her instead. It all goes dark after that. For a good five minutes it’s nothing but pulling, punching, kicking, screeching and rocks. One of them grabs for a clump of my hair, curses the burrs they find instead, forgets and grabs again. Mother thought of everything. The burrs are sharp enough to prick but dull enough to look like decoration, an accident not a weapon. I keep swinging and kicking. My knuckles sting, my head throbs, my sides hurt. Someone throws pebbles. Some of the rocks hit me, some hit the others. They’re in my hair, my clothes, around my feet. When I can, I pick one up and toss it back. They are smoother than I would have thought. This is a warning. I’m just thankful they aren’t using the clubs.
The rocks that hit the others take them by surprise. Their yelps are as pleasant to my ear as their screams. Their voices crack then cut off sharp like broken echoes. Sooner or later someone starts chanting. “Weak ringer, weak ringer.” Before long, they’re all at it. Dancing around me in circles singing at the top of their voices. It’s a shame to have a voice that loud and not be able to carry a tune but Mae sings louder than them all. Every now and then I catch the good doctor looking at her with this worried expression, like she can’t be the same woman he married, when of course she is, and if he hadn’t been so long studying all those bumps and bruises people kept mysteriously coming down with he would have already figured out that Mae sends him more patients than the common cold.
I raise my voice and curse like a last-chancer at a carnival. I string words that have no business going together one right after the other. Phrases like discombobulated beau and rule-breaking-widow-making bride flow off my tongue. Someone tries to cover my mouth, chants “Out-of-tune Osira” like when we were kids. I lick their hand. It tastes sweaty and dirty but their shriek makes it worth it. The rest murmur as if I can’t hear them. “Where is she? What’s she waiting on?” They’ve been expecting Mother Opal to stop them. To send some sort of sign or tell them to forgive me. To take charge. Lord knows she ain’t coming. I’m better off praying for the ancestors to come break this up. Someone has to be the leader.
“Mother Creek, hear my bell, send these heathens straight to—”
The good doctor smacks me in the mouth. My eyes water, lips sting, I swish my tongue around my mouth to check for loose teeth. Before I can do anything about it or wish another bad deed, there’s Mae. “Don’t you hit her like that!” She’s yelling and pop, pop, popping him until even I want her to stop. It’s not his fault. While he was studying medical books, we were making up our own rules. Some hits are sanctioned, others aren’t. He wouldn’t know our ways. I don’t say it though. He hits her back, sure does. Then it’s everyone for themselves. Widows against widows, newlyweds against newlyweds, widows against newlyweds.
Some fool yells, “This isn’t who we are!”
In whatever position we’re in, hands raised, legs extended, knees up, teeth bared, we all stop. Turn. Stare. “You damned fool!” Ezekiel says.
We’re laughing so hard we’re hacking and coughing, spitting, ugly laughing. This is exactly who we are. We wear ourselves out. We’re all panting and heaving. The night air fills with hot breath. Someone turns on a porch light in a house nearby. The next porch lights up. Then the next. It’s a reminder that the whole town is watching. They’re impatient. If there’s a lesson to be learned tonight, it ends with blood. Always has. Until there’s blood, Curdle Creek fights with fists, rocks, sticks and words. Only then can forgiveness begin. I’m not sure I can take being a widow for much longer. All this hitting on me makes me hate the whole lot of them. The whole town if I’m honest. I can’t stand it here with rules for this and rules for that. Who can have babies and who can’t. Who can be what. Who dies. There’s an ordinance for just about everything in Curdle Creek.
The flickering of the lights seems to remind them they have a job to do. They circle me, all of them squaring up so close I can smell their deodorant wearing off. They raise the clubs.
I can’t find my stick. It’s the one thing I was supposed to hold tight to. The one unbreakable rule of Warding Off is to never lose your weapon. God forbid one of the Moving On finds it. Everyone will say I lost it on purpose. Aiding and abetting. There’s an ordinance against it. And of course everyone would know it was mine. They would count the grooves, one notch for each knock. Even if I hadn’t been vain enough to mark it with my initials, a quick tally would lead them back to me. Well, to Mother’s. It’s a childhood weapon. So before it led to me, it would lead them to the girls. But not to my girls. Nothing can lead them back to them.
My eyes sting from tears and dirt, pain, but I look each of my friends in the eye so they know they will die for this. I open my mouth to remind them. Jeremiah grabs my arm to steady me. I know it’s him because he squeezes a bit too long. Then, bop. He hits me on the head with my own damned stick. I know it because someone laughs and my stick drops before I do. I don’t see stars like I expect. Instead I see words. I hear myself mumbling “One by one before it’s done,” and I know one of us won’t make it home tonight.
I wake up in front of the well. The bricks are cold against my back. I suppose I should be grateful they waited for me to wake up before tossing me in. I’m not, though. Just following rules or not, they should all be dead. Fire! Fire! No matter how hard I think it, none of them bursts into flames or any of that biblical stuff. The group gathers around my satchel, dividing up my things. From town, music plays. The Warding Off has begun and they’ve started without us. If we miss it … My whole body starts to tremble. Heaven save us if we miss it.
“There’s enough food for all of us, if we share,” Florence says. Even I almost laugh. Share? What are we, first graders? Well, I know that she won’t be the leader.
“You all right?” Jeremiah smells like Mother’s apple crumble biscuits.
I shake my head. Poor Jeremiah. Hitting me on the head without even being asked should have moved him up the ladder a bit tonight. If there were one. I won’t look up, so I only see his feet. He sits down next to me. Not close enough to be mistaken for kindness but close enough to be close. I shouldn’t have expected anything more, really. He had to get tired of defending his mother’s name. Proving himself trial after trial after trial. What better way to do it than to jump me, eat my mother’s food, and sit beside me with the betrayal fresh on his breath?
He rubs his hands together, thinking. From time to time he looks at me, then back at the group with their cackles puncturing the air. They’ve lit a small fire to warm up. It won’t stay lit because the ground’s too wet. I won’t tell them, though. They’re bickering over who gets to toss me in the well. I would hate to interrupt that.
“You would have done the same,” he says.
We won’t know that. I wouldn’t have been in his position in the first place. Mother would never have turned her back on the town.
There’s a shrill whistle. Then, a cacophony of bells. They’re all ringing. The Warding Off is in full swing. Mother and the girls must be in town with the rest of them by now. I can almost picture them in their ballerina poses, position one, arms raised, poised to catch a wayward soul before it slips into a house. They say once a soul gets in it’s harder to get out than an old grudge. Just one ghost carries four seasons of chaos. A year of bad luck. People are liable to believe anything.
“You all gonna send me down there with nothing at all?” They don’t know about what I have strapped to my chest.
“Just till dawn. We’ll pull you up in the morning.”
“It’s uncovered already?”
“We couldn’t toss you in with the lid still on.” He laughs.
They’ve thought of just about everything. They must have come here this morning, pulled out the long nails, shoved the heavy lid to the ground. Plotted. Must have calculated how much air I’d have, how long I’d last after they sealed it back up, how they’d get me down there in the first place. I’m much bigger than Beth. I don’t imagine they had time to refit the bucket she was folded into.
“If y’all toss me in the well, I’ll probably die. Who gets to throw me to my death?”
Jeremiah sucks his teeth. “We’re sitting you in the bucket. You can prove you’re not a Well Walker.”
Across from us, someone breaks the bucket into jagged pieces. They throw the shards of wood into the fire. The sparks are almost beautiful. The sweet scent of burning mahogany almost masks the stench of everything else. They whoop and cheer. Their shadows dance across the stones toward Jeremiah and me. It seems they have other plans for tonight.
“We took a vote,” Mae says. She’s lying, but no one corrects her. “There’s only room for one of you next year. We don’t need but one farmer in Curdle Creek. You can fight for the place.”
“He can have it.” I nod toward Jeremiah. Mae knows better. One farmer can’t feed the whole town. There’s only a few left as it is. More farmers means more choice and if nothing else, Curdle Creekers would want a choice.
“You’ll fight for it,” one of them says.
“Unless you’re both traitors.”
Even if we are, the ordinance clearly reads that we deserve a trial. We’d be found guilty either way, but a rule’s a rule.
As if she’s watching the words in my mind, Mae answers. “Did you know the good doctor was sworn in as judge this very evening?”
These heathens could say what they want and, because of yesterday, the whole damned town would believe them. Mother and the girls will be unprotected. Unless she marries quick, one of the girls will have to take my place. Mother would be so angry she wouldn’t even use her fifteen minutes of mourning on me. She’d save them for herself and split them, seven and a half minutes each so the girls could mourn her extra.
“How’s your mother, Jeremiah?”
That Mae, always stirring up trouble. She stands so close to the fire it’s a wonder she doesn’t burn up. Smoke might as well be blowing straight out of her mouth. She shakes her head, punctuates what should be silence except for the crackling of the flames with mmm, mmm, mmm sounds. My leg’s twitching. Mae turns away, takes a few steps, stops, then, as if the words just popped into her head, she turns around a fraction, to barely face us. “Won’t be too much longer before her name’s called, will it?”
The rest of them are so giddy for a fight they bounce from foot to foot. With Jeremiah gone, his mother’s name will be called whether she’s a believer or not. There will be nothing standing between her and the Moving On. Unless they take his bride instead. Florence must be thinking what bad luck to be burdened with someone so easily swayed. He scrambles to his feet, kicking up dirt. With a toe he pushes my stick toward me. “Get up,” he says.
It would be better if he growled, snarled, or something. But he doesn’t. He’s just my Jeremiah, fighting to save his mother over me.
“We’re supposed to fight until first blood.” I don’t know why I’m reminding them. They’re licking their lips, circling. I wish the fire would go out so I wouldn’t have to see them.
Jeremiah pokes my foot with his stick—I’m sweaty. Sweat slips down my forehead, gets into my eyes. I must wink or something. “I’m not playing!” he yells.
He crashes his stick down on my ankle. The bone, or the stick, cracks. If I let him kill me, he’ll have everything he’s ever really wanted. He’ll have the second-best job, second-best bride. He’ll have three children, a big farm, a good house. If Mother weren’t Head Charter Mother, they might even have my house. His mother will be given a role she will not want. And when they ring the bell, they will ring it four times. Once for all of us Warded Off tonight in the name of the town.
I leap to my feet. My ankle rolls. I wave my stick high, grit my teeth, Jeremiah braces for the blow. The stick pulses in my palm, guides me. Before anyone can stop me, I run to the well and curl my toes around the cool stone edge. One by one the rest of the group, my friends, double over in pain. The cramping. The only thing they’re going to be watching over tonight is the commode. Mother put enough castor oil in that food to move a mountain. Not because she loves me, though in her own way I’m sure she does—but because she’s already lost one person tonight. The more she loses, the closer she is to the grave.
The cramps aren’t strong enough to stop them all. Jeremiah is one of the only ones still moving. He’s determined to push me in, to claim his place. Not in my name he won’t. The last thing I see is the shadows shrinking in the dwindling fire. There’s the sudden crash of a cymbal, then the trill of a trumpet, booms of bass. The band’s getting closer. The Warding Off is coming to an end. The Moved On have been subdued, Moved On. Their souls have been sent away, set free.
I hope Daddy got away and that he’s far from this place. The bass thunders; its deep boom, boom makes my heart race. The band steps in time. Not too far behind, there are distant whoops, clatters of stones, footsteps. May their souls fly over swiftly, I pray. The sky is red. I don’t know who’s going to be around to pull me up in the morning or if they’ll even bother to. Sometime after breakfast somebody’s bound to come looking for me. By then, they’ll have their stories straight. Ordinance has it that I’m supposed to forgive them. If I’m not dead. Jeremiah’s hand grazes my leg. I close my eyes and jump in.